334 public education in North America The prazeros, holders of leases from the Portuguese Crown, were similar to the holders of the latifundia in Latin America but held a larger number In practice, they were basically independent from 1650 to 1900 Nominally required to defend Portuguese interests, they also derived rights from the loosely organized Shona states of Monomutapa and its successors By 1700 they were functioning as local African leaders They had taken African wives, although they continued to emphasize their Portuguese roots by sending their wives and children to Portuguese schools By 1800 the prazeros were more or less African-Portuguese and were actively engaged in the local slave trade At the height of slave trading in Mozambique, the prazeros dominated trade and were involved in the export of perhaps 15,000 slaves per year The beginning of the end of the prazeros as a privileged class arose from two factors between 1850 and 1890, the abolition of slavery and the scramble for Africa, which endangered Portugal’s position in Africa The latter directly affected the economic base when Great Britain, in order to forestall the German attempt to connect German Southwest Africa (now Namibia) and German East Africa (now Tanzania), occupied the major goldfields of the Shona states The final end of prazero power came between 1880 and 1914 when Portugal sought to reassert control in its attempt to preempt British and German ambitions Europeans were anxious to use African labor, materials, and markets for their increasing factory production When the Portuguese embarked upon the reassertion of their authority in the Zambezi Valley, they utilized three chartered companies, particularly the British-controlled Zambezia Company, which controlled labor and markets and expanded Portuguese control indirectly by, along with the other companies, establishing military posts and building roads, ports, and the transterritorial railroad Labor was mobilized to work on the newly developed plantations, especially in cotton and sugar, which were exported through the port of Beira In the process most holdings of the prazero class were absorbed by the companies By 1940 the prazeros had virtually disappeared as a dominant class Further reading: Bhila, Hoyni H K Trade and Politics in a Shona Kingdom Harlow: Longman, 1982; Boxer, Charles Race Relations in the Portuguese Colonial Empire, 1415– 1825 New York: Penguin Books, 1973; Isaacman, Allen, and Barbara Isaacman Mozambique: From Colonialism to Revolution Harare: Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1983 Norman C Rothman public education in North America Public education has undergone a process of significant change because of religion, politics, economics, and immigration The limited educational system in America led the first settlers, beginning in the New England colonies to push for an educational system similar to that of England The northern, middle, and southern colonies thought about education differently An organized and cohesive educational system was needed from the colonial period through the Industrial Revolution, in order to better the country as a whole THE COLONIES In the northern colonies of New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, the first colonial textbooks and required reading in schools started with Benjamin Harris’s New England Primer of 1690, published in Boston The first primer became required reading in both school and church and was used into the 19th century It was a combination of the hornbook (paddle-shaped boards with paper attached used to teach children capital and lowercase letters, syllables, the benedictions, and prayers) and catechism The idea behind the primer was that it provided a combination of religion and learning so that students would gain salvation as well as knowledge The first public schools began in Massachusetts and eventually arose in most of the other northern colonies Education in the north was predominately sponsored and supported by Puritans who fostered the teaching of their beliefs Dorchester, Massachusetts, established the first public school, Boston Latin School, funded by state taxes By 1750 mandates were set in place for children who did not attend public schools to learn a trade under an apprenticeship The Massachusetts Bay Colony also required towns to set up schools, depending on their size; one elementary school in towns of 50 families or more and one grammar school in towns of 100 families or more The other northern colonies followed with similar laws, except Rhode Island The first state board of